NEW DELHI: At least 62% of under-construction housing projects across 50 cities are delayed, while the percentage for delayed flats/apartments stands slightly higher at 64%, recent analysis by a real estate research firm has found.

According to data accessed by ‘Fight for RERA’, the umbrella body of flat buyers, from research firm Liases Forras, nearly 30% of underconstruction apartments are delayed by two or more years.

“Flats or houses delayed by over two years include huge numbers where work has been going on for more than four-five years. RERA ( has been aimed at bringing relief to buyers of incomplete projects,” said Abhay Upadhyay, president of the flat buyers’ body. “The Real Estate Regulation Act is also aimed at ensuring new projects don’t get delayed,” he added.

The central government had recently informed the Bombay high court that in Maharashtra alone, 5.3 lakh apartments in under-construction projects were delayed, and that more than one-fifth of these were delayed by more than three years. The court had asked the housing and urban development ministry to provide details and the number of delayed projects.

Bombay HC hearing cases filed against RERA

The Bombay HC is holding daily hearing of cases filed by real estate developers challenging RERA and seeking to keep incomplete projects out of the central law.

The court is likely to pronounce judgment soon. Though the housing ministry had been working on a real estate regulation law for more than eight years, it did not have any official data about the number of delayed projects and houses.

But now, with the real estate regulator in each state hosting project details online, consolidated data at the national level will be available soon.

The real estate law was first proposed by the UPA government, and passed by the NDA government, with the aim of bringing relief to lakhs of homebuyers waiting endlessly for houses despite investing their life savings.

Earlier this year, Fight for RERA had appealed to the Centre to start collecting data on all incomplete projects across India and track the number of homebuyers in these projects.

“The projects should be categorised as normal and high-risk and, accordingly, steps should be taken by your government in high-risk projects so as to safeguard the interest of homebuyers in these projects,” it had written to PM Narendra Modi.